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Thursday, 25 April 2013

State of fear

The tragedy of Boston will be used as a chance to tighten the grip of the security state.

Heavily armed police search a family's home in locked-down Boston
HOW LOW will they go to whip up fear and hatred? That's a question we
find ourselves asking daily about the political and media establishment
in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings.
In just over a week, the front-page headlines jumped from reports
blaming a "Saudi national"--who turned out to be an innocent victim of
the attack--to a Brown University student who was tragically missing, to
the endless speculation about every tidbit of information about
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
There doesn't seem to be anything the media won't sink to. One day, a
picture of the widow of suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, wearing a hijab and
dodging reporters, is splashed across the front of the New York Post, with the headline: "Did she know?" The next, the claim is that the bombing "mastermind" received welfare benefits, and the Boston Herald screams, "What nerve."
The leaders of American democracy followed suit. At a memorial
service in Boston for a slain police officer, Joe Biden wasted no time
invoking the horror of September 11. "Whether it's al-Qaeda central...or
two twisted, perverted, cowardly, knockoff jihadis here in Boston, why
do they do what they do?" asked the vice president.
At this point, anyone who claims they know what motivated the two
suspects to commit a barbaric crime is being dishonest. There isn't any
real evidence. But this didn't stop the Washington elite from rushing to
their own anticipated conclusion: for the sake of public safety, it's
time to tighten security, no matter what the cost to civil liberties.
From almost the moment the second brother, Dzhokhar, was found and
captured, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham was seeking out every
television camera in Washington, D.C., to demand that the 19-year-old
not be advised of his Miranda rights to not answer questions and request
a lawyer--a hard-won legal safeguard against suspects being coerced
into confessing. "The last thing we may want to do is read Boston
suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent,'" Graham said.
Graham didn't need to worry. The Obama administration had already
jumped to the same decision, claiming it was a matter of public
safety--though no one at any level of government could explain what
threat to public safety the severely wounded suspect posed at this
point.As Glenn Greenwald wrote in the Guardian:

Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a
result...not many people will care what is done to him...But that's
always how rights are abridged: by targeting the most marginalized group
or most hated individual in the first instance, based on the
expectation that nobody will object because of how marginalized or hated
they are. Once those rights violations are acquiesced to in the first
instance, then they become institutionalized forever, and there is no
basis for objecting once they are applied to others, as they inevitably
will be.

Anyone who thought the government would stop at revoking Miranda
rights needs to pay closer attention. Suddenly, all kinds of repressive
measures--ones that would cause a frantic outcry if they came from a
Republican White House--are on the table, from increased border security
and background checks for immigrants coming to the U.S. to greater
surveillance via video cameras and other means.
America's political elite is exploiting what most people view as a
tragedy as an opportunity instead--an opportunity to tighten the grip of
the security state, to impose greater restrictions on behavior and
rights, to increase surveillance and to shred legal protections.
People around the U.S.--and the world, for that
matter--understandably felt fear and sorrow and outrage about the
Marathon bombings. But those powerful emotions are now being used to
ratchet up state repression. The result won't make anyone's life
safer--but they will make the lives of many much worse.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
COMPARIONS OF the Boston Marathon bombings to the September 11
attacks a decade ago should be made with care for a number of reasons.
For one, there is no evidence linking the Boston bombing suspects to any
organizations or networks that have carried out other such attacks.
Plus there is the sheer size and human toll of the 9/11 attacks in New
York City and Washington, D.C.
Nevertheless, there are important lessons about September 11 that need to be remembered today.
Despite its rhetoric about sympathy for the victims, the Bush White
House primarily used the tragedy to push through policies the unpopular
administration could not have imagined beforehand. Calling for a "war on
terror," George W. Bush succeeded launching wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq. Here in the U.S., his administration waged a war on dissent and
freedom of speech.As
a member of 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows--a group of relatives
of the September 11 victims who opposed the "war on terror"--told Socialist Worker in 2004:
"From day one, we realized that the 9/11 attacks and the deaths of our
family members were going to be used as soon as we went into
Afghanistan. It became clear that there was a utility to these deaths
that was going to be taken advantage of."
The "war on terror" drive to curb civil liberties is a continuation
of U.S. government policies that date back many decades. The U.S.
government has a long history of squelching dissent in the name of
"protecting" the public.
During and after the First World War, there was the scapegoating of
immigrants and leftists, plus the Sedition Act of 1918 that criminalized
opposition to U.S. wars. The aftermath of the Second World War brought
McCarthy-era surveillance, harassment, jailing and deportation of
radicals in the name of "fighting the Communist threat"--Black Power,
antiwar, Native American and socialist groups were infiltrated and
attacked.
September 11 offered a new opportunity for the U.S. government
security state. A new face of fear was introduced: the shadowy enemy of
"radical Islam," which could strike anywhere at any time. This served as
the justification for a "war on terror" in which the U.S. government
has claimed the right to intervene anywhere at any time around the
globe--and to take away rights at home, from any one at any time.
We may never know the motivations of the two young men accused of the
Boston bombings. But we do know that the U.S. government's "solution"
will be worse than the problem.
Among the many complaints of the get-tougher-on-terrorism politicians
is the claim that the FBI dropped the ball with Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He
had actually been questioned by U.S. authorities in 2011, but they
didn't follow up.
But what if they had followed up? Recent experience has shown that
law enforcement is less focused on preventing violence or protecting the
public and more obsessed with "results"--in the form of arrests at any
cost, including entrapment.
So, for example, it's been revealed that the FBI might have helped a young Somali-born man
plot to construct and set off a bomb in downtown Portland, Ore., in
2010. It's doubtful this "terrorist" attack could have been attempted
without the help and encouragement of those whose mission is to stop terrorist attacks.
More "security," imposed with the iron hand of the U.S. government,
doesn't mean a safer world. It means more law enforcement, more
surveillance, more entrapment, more torture. It means making the U.S. a
country with less freedom, less democracy and fewer rights.
No, a more powerful state makes the world more dangerous. It
leaves far greater numbers of people--especially communities of color
and the most vulnerable in society--at the whims of law enforcement. As
we have seen already, the U.S. state has the potential of inspiring more
violence committed by the powerless--senseless and violent acts in
reaction to a senseless and violent society.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THERE'S ANOTHER difference today compared to September 11. More than a
few holes have been poked in the veneer of the "war on terror." A
growing number of people are frustrated--or at least questioning--the
assault on civil liberties and human rights that has come in the name of
security.A Pew Poll taken about a week after the Boston bombings
showed that the percentage of people who were "very worried" about
another attack was barely higher (23 percent) than in November 2010 (21
percent). Less than half of people thought the government could do
anything about it.Polls after the Marathon bombings have not shown an increase
in the willingness of people to give up personal freedoms in order to
protect themselves against terrorism. That's a sharp contrast with the
period after the September 11 attacks.
Before the bombings, in February, a poll of voters for The Hill showed
that a majority of peopled believed Obama was no better or was worse
than Bush when it came to balancing national security with the
protection of civil liberties. Over one-third said Obama was worse than
Bush--15 percent said he was "about the same."
Last week, after one suspect in the Marathon bombings was killed and
another captured, the media focused on officially encouraged
celebrations of Boston residents--very, very white from the looks of
them--who embraced the media- and politically generated patriotic fervor
and racist message against Muslims.
But there were other events, not as well covered in the media, in
which people expressed a different message--embracing solidarity instead
of Islamophobia and organizing to defend Arabs and Muslims against
attack. Some 600 people turned out for a vigil in Malden, Mass., to
stand in solidarity with Heba Abolaban, a Palestinian doctor who was
verbally and physically assaulted while walking with a friend and their
children following the bombing.
Actions like these show the kind of response we can build on--in
order to create a climate of solidarity and unity, instead of fanning
the flames of fear.

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DARCY D= YOU MUST BELIEVE.STANDING UP FOR THE INNOCENT C.E.O
The United Kingdom resident champions causes of the voiceless, the powerless and the weak, particularly in North America. She campaigns for petitions on behalf of incarcerated human trafficking.